2.6 Million Manmade Ponds

[BuzzH]

Elkcheese,

Once again your post more than proves the point that you dont even understand basic biology.

Go back to gradeschool and start over.

You think because a couple kill deers and ducks use a body of water and that a few cattails grow there, thats a perfectly healthy wetland. Now thats funny...really funny. The one thing you are right about is that no man-made water catchment can even remotely mimic a natural wetland. You cant force wetlands into areas where they didnt exist and expect them to have the same species diversity, ecology, water-filtering capacities, etc. Things dont work that way.

To answer your question, yes I have seen the Warm Springs Ponds, and they are not a good example of a healthy Wetland. Thats why ARCO spent a pile of money to reconstruct the largest superfund sight in the world...yes WORLD.

Matter of fact I worked quite a bit on the upper Clarks Fork in the Warm Springs Area surveying permanent cross sections of the river channel to show cut and fill analysis as well as channel migration and determine erosion rates. I also worked with a large number of restoration projects to slow cutting using a wide variety of techniques including revetments, mature shrub transplants, sloping banks, etc. etc. etc.

Obviously they were good enough to fool you, have you seen the sinuosity of the WS Creek near the freeway? Tell me does that look natural? A perfect Rosgen "C" channel perfectly Engineered with GIS and armoured with solid rock...real freaking natural.

This is a waste of time...you just dont get it.

Go eat some cattails, while you watch a couple ducks in your perfect man-made "wetlands" at Warm Springs.

 

[Bambistew]

Buzz

Do you think that there is more sediment in the streams and rivers now than there has ever been? Its number two on the list here on the East Coast... I agree with you that ponds do have an effect down stream... but as this country continues to develop, we're stuck with what we have created. There's no going back.

I understand how a river/water works as far as topping its banks and what not, how that it's a natural occurrence and is needed for a healthy ecosystem. I also agree that some ponds reduce this "problem", but... Like I said, if we didn't construct ponds here the streams would litterly blow out every time it rained hence causing sever erosion and sedimentation down stream. I fully understand that its different here than out west, mostly due to the amount of rain fall and intensity at which it falls, but to say that they are all a problem is kind of a half truth. The kind of ponds I’m talking about are much different than say a stock pond or some form of impoundment that disrupts the natural flow of water in order to fully contain it. Your example would be very true for a large impoundment like a lake with a dam or something similar in which they really don’t release the water at peak flow rates, rather at a constant rate that creates the channel conditions and deprives sand bars and over flowing.

What I’m talking about are the small ponds in my area of the world. For example, let say that we have 10 acres and we're going to build a new Sportsman’s Warehouse on it.

The preconstruction condition of the site we'll say generates a peak runoff flow of 5 cubic feet per second (CFM) for the 1year storm and 20 CFM for the 10 year storm event to the nearby stream.

After construction the whole 10 acres becomes parking lot and building, and now we have a peak flow to the same stream of 25CFM for the 1yr and 90 CFM for the 10 yr because that water has nowhere to get into the ground due to all the pavement and concrete... as you can see if we didn't put a pond in the stream would get the equivalent of a 10yr flow once a year... (pre construction 10yr=20CFM< post 1yr=25CFM) If we didn't put in a pond to control this new runoff rate, that stream would blow out at least once a year. So we construct a pond that will capture the extra runoff and run it through a structure of some sort that will in effect release the water at roughly the same rate before the site was developed... The time of concentration has slightly increased, but the amount of water that reaches the stream is basically the same, and ideally slightly less would be better, just to have a little fudge factor that we know from the past is desirable.

The day and age of just plopping down a dam and hoping for the best is long over, as far as I’m aware.

One thing that I saw on my trip last year to Africa was the amount of ponds/dams that they were constructing all over the place. I asked my PH about them, and he said that they really have no regulation as to where you can construct them or how big they can be… Some of the ‘ponds’ they were constructing where 10-15 acres and 10-20’ deep! That is a lot of water to keep out of a desert environment!

I’ve designed a few wetland ponds and mitigation areas. As a mater of fact one is being constructed as we speak. I’ll be interested to see what it looks like in a couple years once the vegetation has filled in.

BTW Chaser... it will look nothing like the ponds out your front door. I won't deny that there has been some wetlands created by those ponds, but when you compare the amount of area that they encompass and compare that to the actual amount of wetland areas created... you'll see that the total percentage is quite small. Water doesn't necessarily mean wetland.

IMO lack of sedimentation is not a problem in my half of the country it’s quite the opposite.

 

[BigHornRam]

"Have you ever seen a watershed after the streamflow has been altered and blocked sediment from moving downstream? You ought to get out more."

I've seen beaver dams that do this and most people would say what the beaver was doing is mother nature at it's finest. Man does it, and we are wrecking the planet according to some.

 

[Curly]

I've probably designed 100 ponds over the last 15 years. And like Bambistew, I believe the ponds help the rivers. I agree with everything he posted.

Buzz, I also agree with most of what you have posted on this subject. While it's true that streams are meant to overflow and take sediment into the system........that is not supposed to happen during every 6 month storm event like it does in some rivers and streams.

Developers would love nothing more than to direct discharge runoff from their construction projects directly into streams and rivers with not detention or treatment; it costs them big money to have me design their storm drainage systems and have them constructed. But with the salmon being listed as threatened, the drainage rules keep getting more strict and storm drainage ponds keep getting larger in order to mimic pre-european flow rates.

The reason for detention ponds is to reduce the runoff rates that reach streams in order to reduce streambank erosion.

Now, manmade wetlands are a different story. Most of the time manmade wetlands are created to compensate for wetlands lost to development somewhere. And like Moosie said, usually a 2:1 ratio and sometimes more depending on the regulating jurisdiction. That is because no manmade wetland will be as good as a natural one. Manmade wetlands are not generally (if ever) used for the purpose of flow control.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Do you think that there is more sediment in the streams and rivers now than there has ever been? Its number two on the list here on the East Coast... I agree with you that ponds do have an effect down stream... but as this country continues to develop, we're stuck with what we have created. There's no going back.

There are a lot of very good points here, this is what I'm talking about, it's exactly as Bambi has mentioned...

Idealistically in the world of where the United States sits, 200 plus years ago... Butz the Putz's ideals are a great and grand thing, but... As I have continually badgered him about for the last bunch of years....

This is today, we have what we have, and we have to work inside of those constraints.

While pie in the sky would be a good thing, it's not reality...

Brow beating me only strokes his ego and makes him feel good for what he's obviously lacking in the rest of his life... I guess if I can be of help... So be it... Your welcome Butz the Putz...

 

[waterboy]

There are many problems with sediment relating to streams throughout the United States. Some have too much others not enough...easy enough.

Here in Alaska we have braided rivers that are nothing but alluvium for bedload. This has been the naturally occurring state and the system has stabilized to this.

On the east coast we suffer the consequences of logging (1800's) and the traditional farming practices of straightening rivers and pushing them to the hillside to make room for grazing or crops. Another man-made effect was the use of mill dams on the rivers. For many years the sediments were able to accumulate. They are referred to as legacy sediments. There was actually more sediment in the streams at this time die to the clearcutting and such than there is now. This is part of the problem, the streams had stabilized to the high sediment system, now that system is changing and we find ourselves with incised streams.

Then we put in ponds. Many of these ponds create "hungry" water condition. The best explanation is that each little volume, say a cubic cm needs a grain of sand to carry with it. The ponds allow the sediment to settle out so that when the water enters the downstream, it pick up its grain of sand. With hundreds of CFS from a pond it can be a bad situation. Again, this depends on the downstream condition. It affects some greatly and others not at all. The downstream conditions need to be evaluated before all of these ponds are put in.

Although the ponds do attenuate the peak hydrograph to the existing or predevelopment condition, they do this by storing the water. Sure some of it infiltrates, but long term, most of it is stored and released by an orifice or some sort of structure. This keeps the water in the ponds longer, which increases the water temperature....also seen as a huge problem.

A lot of the better SWM (storm water management) facilities actually create a wetland to discharge the water. This uses infiltration and water quality, but requires a lot of room. I once worked on one for a watewater treatment facility in FL that used it to remove the nutrients before entering the river...best system that I have ever seen. Like a huge yard sprinkler in the middle of it to spread the water.

Many of the ponds can be created to replicate wetland conditions, others just for storage of water (deep). Sediments are a problem everywhere. BUT overall there are less now than there has been in parts of the past. Our mountains have matured and our logging practives have been updated. Each condition is different, there is no one recipe that can be applied to all situations. We just need to be mindful of the entire system that we are working in.

 

[BuzzH]

Look at that post!

Someone that understands hydrology, riparian management, how rivers function, etc.

 

[noharleyyet]

Excellent waterboy. Good read.

 

[JB]

He should have begun his post with "momma say's" There are many problems with sediment relating to streams throughout the United States.......other than that, it's brilliant.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Nice read Waterboy... (I think I've learned more on the topic in your one post than I have in all others combined, thanks...)

Butz the Putz, why can't you post any thing like this instead of being a simpleton ass hole when ever any thing is asked???

Or is it your a whore with your knowledge and "some one" has to pay before you will give any of it up???

 

[BuzzH]

Elkcheese,

Its because explaining something to you is a waste of my time. You dont even grasp the basic concepts.

Check out your leading argument in this thread. If you had even a remote clue, you wouldnt post garbage like that.

 

[ELKCHSR]

LOL... Butz the Putz... Your a funny guy...

I would say it's more cause your lazy...

 

[waterboy]

Buzz, I was hesitant to reply, as I did not want to have to explain too much. But when I saw that you knew what a Rosgen C channel was and that there was some educated discussion on sediment, thought that I'd chime in.

ELKCHSR, glad that you got something out of it. It was worth my time then.

 

[BuzzH]

Waterboy,

Chime in anytime...educated discussion is severely lacking by most.

I took Rosgens course...expensive, but I didnt have to pay for it. Plus, I learned a lot. I have some heartburn with parts of his classification system. Over-all pretty good though.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Yes it is Butz the Putz, and about 98% of the information you post is severely lacking in real content, it is extremely refreshing to see people that are in the know, actually posting information on a topic instead of brow beating others with useless diatribe to elevate yourself to what ever level it is your trying to attain at some one elses expense...

Waterboy, thanks again, and all I can say, is keep it up, you're an obvious breath of fresh air down here...

 

[BuzzH]

Hey Elkcheese,

Did you see the explaination of why waterboy posted a reply?

Certainly not because of you or anything you added to the thread, thats for sure. As he'd have to start with..."first the earth cooled..." to get a point across to you.

Here is why he posted, "Buzz, I was hesitant to reply, as I did not want to have to explain too much. But when I saw that you knew what a Rosgen C channel was and that there was some educated discussion on sediment, thought that I'd chime in.

We can see how educated you are on the subject by your initial comments...nothing there that would initiate educated discussion.

 

[ELKCHSR]

thought that I'd chime in

LOL Butz the Putz...

I'd invite you to just chime in any time, but thats not a problem with you is it...